"No, I will stay!" he said, "I want to have you all to myself for a
few minutes. I came to tell you, sweetest, that if I am to be the
first to see your picture and pass judgment on it, I had better see
it now, for I am going away to-morrow!"
"Going away!" echoed Angela, "Where?"
"To Naples," he answered, "Only for a little while. They have
purchased my picture 'Phillida et les Roses' for one of the museums
there, and they want me to see if I approve of the position in which
it is to be placed. They also wish to honour me by a banquet or
something of the kind--an absurdly unnecessary affair, but still I
think it is perhaps advisable that I should go."
He spoke with an affectation of indifference, but any observer of
him whose eyes were not blinded by affection, could have seen that
he exhaled from himself an atmosphere of self-congratulation at the
banquet proposition. Little honours impress little minds;--and a
faint thrill of pain moved Angela as she saw him thus delighted with
so poor and ordinary a compliment. In any other man it would have
moved her to contempt, but in Florian--well!--she was only just a
little sorry.
"Yes, perhaps it might look churlish of you not to accept," she
said, putting away from her the insidious suggestion that perhaps if
Florian loved her as much as he professed, an invitation to a
banquet at Naples would have had no attraction for him as compared
with being present at the first view of her picture on the morning
she had herself appointed--"I think under the circumstances you had
better not see the picture till you come back!"
"Now, Angela!" he exclaimed vexedly, "You know I will not consent to
that! You have promised me that I shall be the first to see it--and
here I am!"
"It should be seen by the morning light," said Angela, a touch of
nervousness beginning to affect her equanimity,--"This light is pale
and waning, though the afternoon is so clear.
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